[Dawn] Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar... who used to be known in intelligence circles as The Most Evil Man in the World but who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil... in an interview published Wednesday has denied having any links with the Pakistain Taliban, condemning the Pak turban outfit's strategy of blowing up schools and blocking girls' education.

Hekmatyar, a former prime minister who leads Afghanistan's second largest turban group Hizb-e-Islami, told Britannia's Daily Telegraph newspaper that he was against the blowing up of schools and educational institutions "not only in Afghanistan and Pakistain but elsewhere in the world."Ummm... But it doesn't happen anywhere else in the world...
"I don't think that a devoted mujahid could be involved in such things," said Hekmatyar, accusing 'foreign intelligence agencies' of being involved in such attacks.

The Pak Taliban's blocking of girls' schooling was thrown into the spotlight in October by its attempted murder of 15-year-old education campaigner Malala Yousafzai on her schoolbus.

Hekmatyar indicated that Hizb-e-Islami, notorious for its bloody siege of Kabul in the 1990s, has softened some of its hardline Islamist policies which included banning women from education.

He insisted that the group considers "education is as necessary for girls as it is for boys", though they object to combined male and female classes.

[TELEGRAPH.CO.UK] In a rare and exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph Gulbuddin Hekmatyar... who used to be known in intelligence circles as The Most Evil Man in the World but who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil..., who has been designated a global terrorist by the United States, heaped insults on the British Royal and pledged to carry out more attacks before the UK's withdrawal in 2014.

Speaking from Qazi's guesthouse an undisclosed location the warlord accused Britannia of dragging "herself into this unjustified, useless but cruel conflict to please the White House. The British did not gain anything instead they lost blood and treasure."

"I do not understand how the British public accept their children being sent to certain death in order to please American generals.

Turning to Prince Harry he said that "the British Prince comes to Afghanistan to kill innocent Afghans while he is drunk. He wants to hunt down Mujaheddin with his helicopter rockets without any shame.

"But he does not understand this simple fact that the hunting of Afghan lions and eagles is not that easy! Jackals cannot hunt lions."

Pointing to a recent attack on a base where Prince Harry was located he said: "During the Mujaheddin attack on the American base the Prince saw that he was the one about to be hunted and was searching for a hole in which to hide himself."

And he added: 'It seems that some British authorities still dream about the times of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and they want their ambassador to be treated like a viceroy and their prince to go out in uniform to hunt for human beings and play the satanic role that they used to play in the past.'

The warlord's comments came in an interview with the Daily Telegraph from a mountain base, reported to be close to the Afghan/Pakistain border.Probably closer to Miranshah than to Nangahar. Hek is a constant.

[Al Ahram] Despite mass resignations, the Salafist Calling confirmed in a statement released Monday that the Salafist Nour Party remains its only political arm.

"A movement cannot support more than one political party at the same time...the Nour Party is the Salafist Calling's only political arm," the statement read.

The movement has called on all of its members to join and support the party, which has been mired in internal disputes.

The Salafist Calling is Egypt's largest and most influential Salafist movement and includes a number of the country's most prominent preachers.

The statement comes after former head of the Nour Party Emadeddin Abdel-Gafour officially resigned his post as party chairman last week and announced his plans to launch a new political party, Al-Watan (Homeland).

Other members including former spokesperson Yosri Hamad also resigned and announced they were set to join the new party.

The conflict within the party is reportedly between Abdel-Ghafour's front and followers of influential holy man Yasser El-Borhami, one of the founders of the Salafist Calling, a movement that spawned the Nour Party in 2011.

The supreme committee of the Nour Party, which espouses an ultra-conservative brand of Islam, withdrew confidence from Abdel-Ghafour earlier in October.

Abdel-Ghafour, however, refused to step down...Hell no! The money's too good!...
The Salafist Calling, led by El-Borhami, stood by members of the party's supreme committee against party chairman.

Abdel-Ghafour and his supporters -- known within the party as the 'Reformist Front' -- retaliated by calling for the dismissal of the supreme committee via the party's official Twitter account.

The Nour Party is the most influential Salafist party in Egypt. It led a coalition of Islamist political parties that won 127 seats in the now dissolved lower house of parliament.

[REUTERS] Egypt's Moslem Brüderbund said on Wednesday some of its members had been wrongfully placed in durance vileI ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! in United Arab Emirates (UAE) on allegations of helping to train local Islamists in subversion tactics.

"I know 11 people were tossed in the calaboose... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not.... I know that some of them are from the Brotherhood," said Mahmoud Ghozlan, a Brotherhood front man in Cairo. "The claim that they are a cell seeking to destabilize the country is devoid of truth."

The arrests came to light on Tuesday when a UAE newspaper reported the authorities had arrested an "Egyptian Moslem Brüderbund cell", citing an unnamed source.

The oil-rich UAE, which has long voiced distrust of the Moslem Brüderbund that helped propel Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi to power this year, arrested about 60 Islamists last month, accusing them of being linked to the Egyptian group and plotting to undermine governments in the Gulf region.

In what appeared to be an effort to ease tensions, Egypt's intelligence chief, General Mohamed Shehata, headed to the UAE for talks, airport officials said.

An aide to the Egyptian president also handed over a message from Mursi to UAE's president, a statement from the Egyptian presidency said, without giving details.

"We are in contact with the authorities there and will see what will happen in the next period," Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr was quoted as saying by the state news agency.

The son of one of the arrested Egyptians said in Cairo that his father, Ali Sonbol, is a medical doctor and is not involved in political activities.

"They didn't say where they were taking him and what were the charges," Ahmed Sonbol told Rooters. "The Egyptian embassy only assured us that he was detained by UAE authorities and he is well."

[Dawn] Pakistain Mohammedan League-Nawaz leaders have said that conspiracies are being hatched against the party to prevent it from coming into power. They have also claimed that the PML-N is the only political party which could steer the country out of the present crises.

The PML-N leaders, including Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, provincial president Pir Sabir Shah, central leader Khawaja Mohammad Khan Hoti, expressed these views at a public meeting at Parano Park area here on Tuesday.

Mr Jhagra said that national institutions and economy were on the verge of collapse due to wrong policies and poor governance system. He alleged that the rulers had preferred their interests to national interests and adopted the policy of collecting money through every possible illegal means. He said that the steps being taken by the judiciary was the only ray of hope for the country.

The party's provincial president claimed that intelligence agencies had been supporting PTI chief Imran Khan... aka Taliban Khan, who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... and Tehrik Minhajul Koran chief Tahirul Qadri. In fact, anybody but President Ten Percent's party or Nawaz' party.
He expressed concern...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... over the poor law and order situation in the country and asked the federal and provincial governments to take effective steps against terrorism.

[Dawn] In light of the frequent acts of terrorism, especially suicide kabooms, in Qissa Khwani Bazaar and adjoining streets, Beautiful Downtown Peshawar...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.coppers manning the old city areas consider Afghan nationals the main problem for them, saying these foreigners move from one place to another very easily but leave no trace.

They are firmly of the opinion that an operation should be carried out in the area from GT Road to City Circular Road without delay to register tenants and catch rogue elements.

During a visit by Dawn to these areas on Tuesday, police officials expressed ignorance about directives from their bosses about registration of tenants in rented buildings. They also said they had no record of the occupants of these structures.

Police have time and again claimed to launch a campaign for registration of all tenants in the city and force property dealers to avoid provision of rented buildings without proper permission from the local police.

Also, they had reportedly decided that only families would be allowed to get houses in the residential population. However,nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... in the main city areas, police have no record of tenants. The people can easily get a building on rent with police knowing nothing about them.

"The only solution to overcome the increasing terrorist acts is to carry out a thorough and concentrated operation and register tenants," police officials said, suggesting that Afghan nationals be stopped from entering the city and renting houses.The cop shoppes located inside the city have no record about the people living in the rented houses, plazas and flats.

They said police had to beef up security only during Muharram to avert any eventuality, adding that police had to visit different hotels, plazas to check the suspected people on temporary basis.

According to the officials, 18 kabooms have taken place in the city areas including Qissa Khwani but till now it could not be ascertained as to who facilitated the jacket wallahs and how accurately they stroke their targets.

Thai officials say Rohingya Muslim migrants allegedly fleeing violence and persecution in western Burma must be sent back to their homeland. The 73 refugees, including women and children, were discovered drifiting in a small, overcrowded boat off the Thai resort town of Phuket, short of their final destination of Malaysia.

Thai authorities seized the boat, which had been at sea for 13 days, and gave the refugees food and supplies on Tuesday. But local media reports on Wednesday say they have been arrested and ordered to return to Burma by land.

Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, says Thai authorities must come up with a better policy for dealing with boat people. He said, "For the first time, Thai authorities have intercepted a boat, filled up not with young Rohingya men seeking work in Malaysia, but families with young children and women. They are traveling together claiming they are escaping persecution, human rights violations, and violence in their homeland."

The latest group of asylum seekers were headed for Malaysia, which has become a common destination for Rohingya refugees. On Sunday, about 450 Rohingya landed in Malaysia after a boat journey that left one of them dead.

Rohingya are fleeing Burma's western Rakhine, or Arakan, state, where violence in recent months has killed dozens and displaced hundreds of thousands. Rights groups accuse Burma's government of systematic persecution of the members of the Rohingya, considered to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.